Aldous Huxley Quotes

The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.

To talk about religion except in terms of human psychology is an irrelevance.

A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind.

Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

Man is an amphibian who lives simultaneously in two worlds-the given and the home-made, the world of matter, life and consciousness and the world of symbols.

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Applied Science is a conjuror, whose bottomless hat yields impartially the softest of Angora rabbits and the most petrifying of Medusas.

Hinduism the perennial philosophy that is at the core of all religions.

If you want to write, keep cats.

All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

... one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.

What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.'

One of the great attractions of patriotism

The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.

The more you know, the more you see

The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories.

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.

Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.

People are much too solemn about things - I'm all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds.

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right

I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

People will insist on treating the mons Veneris as though it were Mount Everest. Too silly!

But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably.

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations.

Civilization is sterilization.

The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

An irrelevance, and your life's altered.

If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time.

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.

What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.

We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

Peace is a necessary condition of spirituality, no less than an inevitable result of it.

Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It's one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.